AS ALWAYS, MY most heartfelt gratitude goes to you, my fabulous readers, for investing yourselves in my poor, tormented characters. I can truly say that I love my job, and it’s only because of you that I can do what I do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I dedicated this book to my brilliant editor, Amanda Bergeron, who pulled the story out of the pit of darkness it started in and made it into something you might enjoy reading. I am so honored that she decided Hilary and I were worth the effort. The day my agent sent my manuscript to Amanda was the luckiest day of my life.

And speaking of my omnipotent uber-agent, Suzie Townsend, as always, I owe everything to her tireless efforts on my behalf. She’s blown away every hope and expectation I could have had for an agent, and has become someone I consider a friend. There aren’t words to thank her adequately for everything she’s done for me.

There’s also a village that needs thanking. Everyone behind the scenes at New Leaf Literary and HarperCollins—including, but not limited to, Jo Volpe, Kathleen Ortiz, Pouya Shahbazian, Jaida Temperly, Danielle Barthel, Abigail Tyson, and Dana Trombley—has put in countless hours to get Hilary’s story out into the world, and I owe them my deepest gratitude. And the William Morrow Art Department are some of my favorite people! Thanks for the awesome covers!

To my crit partner, Kody Keplinger, smooches! Love you, girl! Thanks also to Ingrid Paulson for steering me toward some amazing NA books, and for helping to smooth over some lumps in this one.

My family is my greatest source of inspiration. Without their support, I never would be able to do what I do. If I could have hand chosen who I’m related to, I would have picked each and every one of you. Love you. And a special thanks to my nephews for their Minecraft expertise.

And, as always, because my muse is a wannabe rock star, I need to send a shout-out to the musical inspiration for this book. Hilary and Alessandro are very complex characters, and there are several songs that shaped them, but the one that most embodies Hilary is Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason.” Alessandro evolves over the course of the first two books in this series, but his song throughout is Creed’s “My Sacrifice,” which Hilary chooses as his ringtone.

THE FAKE BLONDE with the fake lips and the fake double Ds is glaring at me. Hell, I’d be glaring at me too if I could. I can’t believe I screwed that up.

But I did.

I always do.

The only auditions I can get without an agent are for off-off-Broadway musicals. That’s because the only thing on my resume is American Idol, where I made it all the way to Hollywood Week three years ago. Unfortunately for me, I can’t dance . . . which is a problem unless you’re playing a paraplegic or something, so I’m basically screwed.

But that was worse than usual. Christ, I actually knocked that girl over.

In my defense, she was screwing up almost as much as I was. If she were where she belonged, I wouldn’t have run her down. But . . . shit.

I pull my gaze away from the deathbeam of Blondie’s glare and glance at the casting director, flitting around up front like she’s all that. She’s never acted a single part on Broadway, and yet here she is, my judge and jury.

Brett’s worked with her before. Says she’s pretty cool. He told me he’d talk to her—put in a good word. But he came in halfway through the audition, plunked down in the back row, and hasn’t budged since. I really only noticed his arrival because of the burst of pheromones up front and the estrogen shuffle that followed. All of a sudden, all the girls onstage were adjusting their cleavages and fluffing their hair. But I never saw him even look our direction. And he never went up front.

I look up at him now and force myself to breathe. He’s texting, looks like, and clearly has no intention of saying anything to anybody.

A flicker of annoyance starts in my gut, but it’s snuffed out cold by nerves when Casting Director Chick approaches the stage. She looks up at us and claps her hands twice to get our attention.

“Okay . . .” she says loudly, then pulls her iPad out from under her arm and glances at it. “Numbers one, two . . . seven, ten, twelve . . . fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, and twenty-one: I need you to sit tight. We’ll do the number again in five. The rest of you, thank you for auditioning. You’re free to go.”

Damn.

Most Idol rejects record indies, or try for record contracts, but since I was six and my grandpa took me to see Annie on Broadway right before he died, my dream has always been to act onstage. But everything is so political, and the competition is tough, so this is pretty much how the last three years have gone. Thanks, but no thanks.

My muscles are bunched so tight that when I look down to double check the number pinned to my sleeve, I feel something in my neck pull.

Thirteen.

That should have been my first clue that things weren’t going to go well. Lucky number seven made it. Unlucky thirteen, not so much.

“That blows, Hilary.”

Jessica’s sympathetic voice snaps me out of my one person pity party and I try to smile at her. She’s miles of legs topped by big brown doe eyes, which are looking at me like my puppy just became roadkill. Her long honey-brown hair is pulled off her face in a high ponytail, and her fair skin is perfectly flushed without a stitch of makeup, making her look very I-have-no-clue-how-hot-I-am.

“It was just bad karma. Number thirteen,” she says with a poke to my shoulder. “I think everyone should take their cue from hotels and just skip it.”

“What?”

She plants one slender white hand on her hip and flips the other one palm up in a presenting-the-obvious gesture. “You know, how there’s never a thirteenth floor in hotels?”

“I never noticed.” Mostly because I’ve never stayed in one with more than two floors and a broken ice maker.

“So, we’re still going out for my birthday next week?”

This brightens my mood a little. As adorable as she is, Jess knows how to have a good time, and that is so what I need right now. “Definitely. A week from Thursday, right?”

She nods. “We should try that new place on the Lower East Side . . . Club Sixty-nine, I think?”

“Sounds good.”

She bounces on her toes a little and her ponytail swings behind her. “It’s going to be epic!”

“Break a leg, Jess,” I tell her with a punch to the shoulder—right at her lucky number seven. If I’d said this to anyone else, I’d have meant it literally. There’s nowhere on this planet more cutthroat than Broadway. But Jessica is a really sweet kid. At nineteen and pretty fresh off the bus from Biloxi, she hasn’t let this place ruin her yet. She’s a walking contradiction: an adorably gay Southern bell who believes in karma.

I try to remember what I was like three years ago, at that same age. I wasn’t as jaded as I am now, but I was never as innocent and naive as Jess is. This world doled me my first swift kick three days before my fourteenth birthday, when my dear mother got her drunken ass thrown in jail, leaving me to fend for myself.

And that was only the beginning.

“Thanks,” she says with an unsure smile, like she wants to jump up and down in her excitement, but she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.

I give her a quick hug. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

She bobs a nod. “I’ll call you.”